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Comment Re:Excellent Move (Score 1) 120

The fraud of firing 6000 workers and immediately hiring 6000 H-1Bs was too in your face.

The Dept of Labor did the right thing by suspending Microsoft from the PERM program.

Oh, you think this is about doing the right thing... the US government... the current US government? I mean it's cute that you believe that.

Adobe, MS, et al. are being targetted because they've got deep pockets. A few million given to the right orange madman and this problem goes away. They don't even have to do it in secret any more.

Comment Re:Countries that do not change clocks use ST (Score 1) 277

Even though some regions or countries stay on a shifted time offset year-round (which might look or feel like being "ahead" like daylight saving time), standard time is legally and geographically considered the baseline time zone for those areas. They simply choose not to participate in the biannual clock adjustments.

Countries & Regions That Do Not Change Clocks Most of Asia: This includes major industrialized nations like China, India, Japan, and South Korea, as well as most of Southeast and Central Asia.

Most of Africa: Almost the entire African continent stays on a single standard time year-round.

Parts of the Middle East: While countries like Iran and formerly parts of the Levant have experimented with it, places like Turkey and several neighbors maintain fixed times.

Parts of Europe: Iceland, Belarus, Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan do not practice seasonal time changes. (The European Union has debated abolishing the practice entirely, but member states still currently shift together).

Much of South and Central America: Countries like Argentina, Brazil (which abandoned nationwide DST a few years ago), and most of their neighbors remain on permanent standard time.

Erm... notice a pattern there?

Most of these nations are equatorial or not that far off it. Most of them between the 26th parallels. As you get closer to the equator, there is less difference between the hours of daylight between summer and winter, as you get further you get a greater differential.

In Perth, Western Australia (36 S) there's about a 3 hour difference, in London, UK (51 N) there's an 8 hour difference and this difference does not neatly line up around 12 PM so if you had permanent GMT you'd have the sun getting up at 3 AM in the summer disrupting sleep and if you kept permanent BST you'd have darkness until 9 AM in winter causing chaos on the way to work/school.

Perth doesn't have DST (but the eastern states do so that causes problems) because the differential in daylight hours isn't much of an issue (that and Perth is incredibly backwards and resistant to change but that is another discussion entirely) however London does because there is a huge difference in daylight hours between winter and summer.

Comment Re:We already tried this (Score 1) 277

DST was made permanent in the USA in 1974, and it was so unpopular it got repealed the same year.

It sounds good until you have to live it... there are also morning people among us, and kids trying to walk to school where further darkness presents a safety issue. Not everyone benefits from potential extra sunlight to extend happy hour.

Before we had mechanical clocks, we used to adjust to the hours of daylight automatically. Daylight Savings came in because we needed to keep doing that as the hours of daylight changed with the seasons, so the solution was to change the clocks.

With most clocks being automatically updated these days, you barely have the excuse of having to change the clocks to oppose DST. You go to sleep on one time and wake up in the new one.

Comment Re:Been there, done that. (Score 2) 277

Kids walking into school buildings in the dark.

Instead, we could have kids playing outside after school in the dark. At least when they are walking* to school, I know where they'll be.

*People actually make their kids walk these days? If you don't drive them in the Land Rover, Child Protective Services will be called.

Comment Re:everything has to rust (Score 1) 30

True, to a point. Perl made _some_ commitments to maintaining the "multiple ways of doing things". Which led to a lot of unreadable code (intentionally, at times). And like Python, Perl was a glue language. And proud of it as well. The problem will become that in the step to Rust, there are things that Rust can't do (efficiently, at all, or without "unsafe" keywords). And then where will we be?*

But that's not the way a "maintainer" can leave his mark and feel important.

Larry Wall is a linguist as much as anything else. He didn't have a PhD thesis and associated reputation on the line with "a new thing".

*I lived through the era of things that just worked on various flavors of UNIX and Linux. And then the Microsoft consultants came in, picked up our requirements documents and a red Sharpie and started to cross out anything that Windows can't do. Just to get it in the door.** History repeats itself?

**I worked in a secure facility with armed guards. At one point, I asked the boss how these people even got in the door. "We gave the guards guns. Why can't they use them?"

Comment Re:Wait! What? (Score 1) 34

Except that nobody is really desperate to get on broadcast TV anymore in urban and suburban areas. Other than to get onto the cable systems via "must carry" rules. For free, to boot. There's no quicker way to get your Sunday Morning preacher carried all over the city than to put up a crappy low power transmitter and ask no remuneration. The Word of the Lord spread far and wide is sufficient compensation. Same for the shopping channels. They ask no money, so they can't get bounced off the cable. And they make plenty by advertising cheap jewelry, silver (plated) coins, personal injury attorneys and CBD infused everything.

Somebody needs to look at the economics of cable and broadcast and figure out which way the value is really flowing. Without input (coke and hookers) from cable or the NAB.

Comment Wait! What? (Score 1) 34

What happened to the "must carry" rules? Where the Big, Bad cable companies had to carry local broadcasts? Including every 500 Watt Jesus Channel in town. It's getting so you can't tell who's on the receiving end of this corporate daisy chain anymore.

Here's an idea: Everyone divest themselves of content providers and studios. And become common carriers for local regions. Then let the big boys fight for room on your cable, fiber or r.f. spectrum with their cash. Which will go quite a ways toward funding local news and programming.

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